The big news out of this week’s album sales is not in the Top Ten (nine of which were already there last week), but just beyond that into the 11-20 range. Specifically:
12. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast (Fat Possum) – 26,000
13. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino) – 25,000
16. Bon Iver – Blood Bank EP (Jagjaguwar) – 23,000
Noteworthy is the fact that Merriweather Post Pavilion “debuted at No. 38 two weeks ago on the Top Independent Albums chart purely on vinyl sales.” Clearly, they found their “room of bros to buy t-shirts and vinyl albums for bros who don’t have record players.”
If you give a crap, you can see the Top Ten after the jump…
1. Taylor Swift – Fearless – 63,000 (-1%)
2. Beyonce – I Am … Sasha Fierce – 51,000 (+3%)
3. Nickelback – Dark Horse – 45,000 (-3%)
4. Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreak – 39,000 (-1%)
5. Twilight soundtrack – 33,000 (-8%)
6. Keyshia Cole – A Different Me – 31,000 (flat)
7. Britney Spears – Circus – 31,000 (-9%)
8. Jamie Foxx – Intuition – 30,000 (-4%)
9. Notorious soundtrack – 29,000 (-32%)
10. Mariah Carey – Ballads – 29,000 (debut)
Shit, I was hoping the link was to Lefsetz and he was going to give his opinions on these acts.
I’ll have to improvise:
Andrew Bird
Put 20 pounds on this kid, get some more photo shoots in Esquire and GQ, an outro to a TV show big with the under-35s, and his easy-listening-for-hipsters music just may be around another 3-3.5 years.
Animal Collective
I dunno; since Garcia died there just aren’t enough of the right drugs to truly appreciate this band. Good press only gets you so “high.” This is the last we’ll see them on this list.
Bon Iver
Not bad for a 4-track and an outhouse.* I bet Mottola wishes he knew how to make records on a budget like this. But sooner or later the kids are gonna shave their beards.
* I almost wrote “Portastudio in a portapoddy” but that wouldn’t’ve been quite right…
Oh come ON! That was a damn good Lefsetz impression!
(OK I’ll go get a life now)
Ha. The Mottola reference was pretty good.